United Reformed And Methodist Church

5191 SY 4692 1/262

EAST STREET (South Side) United Reformed and Methodist Church

GV II

1. Architects Poulton and Woodman of Reading. Hammer dressed stone with ashlar dressings. Pitched roof. Nave and 2 aisles. "W" front expresses this by buttresses with setbacks crowned by octagonal spirelets with steep gablets on each side. Coped gable end, crow-stepped at very top and crowned by tall finial. Large 5-light grouped lancets, centre 3 lights grouped together under 1 arch and divided from remainder by colonnettes: reticulated tracery hood mould. Pointed arch in gable end with Geometrical tracery. Porch to each aisle with very steep roof, coped gable ends and finials, diagonally planked double doors with ornamental iron hinges, in cusped pointed arches with hood moulds. Star-shaped windows above each porch. Side elevations have 6 lancets with shaped arches, separated by buttresses. Interior. Open hammerbeam timber roof on foliate corbels. Galleries round 3 sides on twisted iron columns. Rib-vaulted apse approached through arch on shafts with elaborate foliate capitals, corbelled out from wall; "O Worship the Lord in the Beauty of Holiness" painted round extrados. Gabled and crocketed organ in apse. Panelled pulpit. Early C17 polygonal pulpit with 2 tiers of arcading, originally in the church at Charmouth. It was from this pulpit that the Vicar of Charmouth (John Wesley's great-grandfather) was preaching while the fugitive Charles II was waiting for the ship which failed to take him into exile in 1651.

Nos 8 to 36 (even) form a group with the United Reformed and Methodist Church.

Listing NGR: SY4675792863